This weekend's Chilean earthquake was 8.8 on the Richter Scale, among the most powerful in recorded
history. This is how its 66.6 exajoules of energy spread across the Pacific, as shown by the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration.

The earthquake—which so far has resulted in more than 700 dead people— was the equivalent of the
explosion of 15.8 gigatons of TNT. That's 316 Soviet Tsar nuclear bombs—at 50 megatons, the most
powerful ever created—dropping at the same time in the same place.

As NOAA's graphic model shows, it generated a huge tsunami that wiped the Pacific, fortunately weakening
before it reached any populated coastal areas. [NOAA]

I'm so in love with how this forum handles read vs. unread threads. I can check one thread a couple days ago and it remembers that I still haven't seen other threads, but you can also easily mark everything as read